Dr. Who Tears

I'm way behind on my Doctor Who watching, because, well, really, David Tennant. I mean, he's gone. And I haven't been able to really accept this new guy, though I think he's on his third year. It's got to be hard following David Tennant.

Anyway, I'm up to sometime in his second year, and came across something important. It's actually amplified by this Doctor being sort of manic and unanchored, because the contrast when he pauses and say something wise is more pronounced. So he's talking to a young woman whose husband was killed in the war, and it's Christmas so she hasn't told her children because she doesn't want to spoil Christmas forever for them.

So he says that he understands, that she's angry because they're happy now and they'll be so sad later, and what's the point? He says, "They're happy now. They'll be sad later. So what use is the happiness?"

Then, very gently, she says, "Because they'll be sad later."

And that's it.

I was trying to reverse-engineer why this was so powerful. First, of course, the situation (children losing father, always sad). But also I think it's because the mom is having to pretend. She knows her husband is dead, but has to pretend that he's going to join them. The tension and conflict that deception adds is wonderfully poignant. I think often we want to portray the exact experience, but in fact the depth of emotion is often in the complications, the what-ifs and if-onlies, not the exact reality. If we can impose some complication, we might intensify the emotion.

The other thought though is that emotion is always paradoxical, and when we express it as a paradox, we are presenting its power.  How meaningless it is that they are happy now but only because they don't know they'll be sad later. And yet, there's exactly where the emotion is-- that they will be sad later, so the happiness now is even more important. And then -- we can look ahead-- the future pain will be that much greater because of the present happiness.

The paradox, the complication, can't really be explained, but can be expressed, and in simple terms, the simpler the more affecting:
Because they'll be sad later.

Emotion is complicated, and it's simple. The experience is complicated, but the expression is simple. Think about that. Our response to great emotion, however complicated, is tears, you know? Great joy. Great confusion, Great pain. Tears.

Complicated emotion, simple expression.

Alicia

Interview about characterization

Vince Gilligan is the creator of Walter White, the biology teacher turned meth chef in Breaking Bad. Here are his interesting thoughts about how he set about characterizing this man and charting the way he changed into a sociopath. I found his discussion of the teddy bear in the pool intriguing-- he started with the image, understood it was a sign from the subconscious, and realized he'd have to figure out where the teddy bear came from. (This is, btw, the same way the event is presented in the episode-- that is, our own experience replicates the creation of the plot thread.)

Has that ever happened to you, when you get an image or idea or snatch of dialogue and have to create a storyline to explain it?

Alicia

Subtext again

Frasier, as Robert McKee says, is the greatest British sitcom set in America. (I don't know what it means, but it sounds good.)

Anyway, I saw this "Bulldog proposes" episode and the ending is pretty amazing. One character tells the truth, and the other, to spare his feelings, misinterprets, and the first (Bulldog) graciously accedes to this interpretation, and while responding in the same vein, reveals even more what the truth is.

Great writing, and my point is, never assume that just telling the surface is sufficient. The important stuff is often subtextual, because humans are complicated creatures.

For that matter, so are cats. My cat's meows contain more subtext than an Ian McEwan novel.

Here's the Frasier episode, and it's all good (Frasier was the best written sitcom of its time, and best acted), but the scene I'm talking about starts at 15:10 or so).

Alicia

Different strokes

Okay, here I am raving about Sons of Anarchy again, but really, I don't think you guys get it-- this is a great show with many lessons for us. If you all just watch it, I'll stop bugging you. :)

Anyway, there was a moment in the latest episode that made me think about romance at different stages.
There are two couples in this story: The young Jax and Tara, who are negotiating all the problems of twenty-something love, job vs lover, identity vs. romance.

The other is Gemma and Clay, Jax's mother and stepfather. They have been married for probably 20 years.

So Gemma finds out that Clay has deceived her about their grandson (who has been kidnapped). Clay (for good reason) has been telling her that the beloved baby is "okay". So Gemma finds out about the kidnapping. "You lied to me!" she cries.
Clay says, penitently, but somewhat impatiently, "Sorry."

And then they go on to discuss how to get the child back.

I was thinking of how Jax and Tara would have handled that-- the young couple. Tara might say, "You lied to me! How can I go on with you, if I can't trust you?"
And Jax might say, "If you can't trust me, I don't want to be with you!"

What's fun about Gemma and Clay is why they're able not to make a big deal about this, and as a long (very long) married person, I find this interesting and ... I don't know. Mature.

1. They're never going to split. They each know this. They might get mad. They might have good reason to be angry with each other. But no matter what, they're going to end up together, so there's reason just to cut to the chase and get the nasty part over with.

2. While she doesn't like being lied to, she knows that Clay must have done that because he thought it was best for her. She knows that he loves her and wants the best. He could be wrong about what is best, but he won't be trying to hurt her.

3. She loves him. In some ways, nothing else matters. She's not going to stop loving him, no matter what.

4. They are middle-aged. They are not trying to establish their identities or figure out who is in charge. They've already worked most of that out. (Gemma is totally in charge. :)

So while the deception is an issue, it's not an issue that will break them up. So the conflict is not the deception so much as the problem that inspired it-- the kidnapping.

What this tells me is that conflict can be developed to fit the context. And timing is all with romantic conflict. What does this romance need to succeed? Early in the romance, so much has to be established, so much has to be worked through. The individual identity still exists, and can still be reclaimed.

But with an established romance, well, the individual identity might take a second place to the couple identity. The established couple might respond differently because they have put priority on the relationship. No matter what, they're going to end up together, so they might not spend as much time working through issues.

No big revelation here-- but here's a writer who really thought through the characters and understood them and their interactions. There's no settling for the generic, the conventional. Rather, there's a focus on these people and their reality.

Alicia

Endings and Anarchy

Did anyone see the season finale of Sons of Anarchy? I was trying to tell my sister about this, and she said her co-worker Missy is also watching it, and she'd direct her to the blog. So Missy, this one's for you, if you're out there.

Now this makes me think about endings, and this is important: The ending tells what's really important. How the characters resolve the various conflicts is how you tell the reader who they really are, and what they really stand for, and what they really value. But it also tells what your whole story is ultimately about-- the theme. That's actually why good books so often go bad in the ending, I think, because they don't truly let the reader know what's important. The ending should give the reader events that show the characters and who they are now and what matters, after all else.

Well, the end of Sons of Anarchy shows a lot, but above all it shows that it's about fathers and sons. (There's a daughter too, the archvillain's.) At the center is the powerful romance between Gemma and Clay, but her actions here in the end show that she doesn't trust this, doesn't trust his love, doesn't maybe even want him to love her above all (she is selling him short, I think, but this part is definitely from her POV). Gemma has just been framed by the FBI lady for a murder (committed actually by the FBI lady). At that very moment-- and see how effectively events are stacked here in the end, so that there's no downtime at all, and no let-up of pacing), Clay and her son (his stepson) Jax are in the process of avenging her gangrape by ambushing the evil overlord. Now Gemma is, more than Clay actually, the keeper of the motorcycle gang code. She knows that by this code, their revenge and the taking back of the power of the town is all important. And she doesn't interfere with it.

Instead, she calls Wayne, the sheriff. He's an old friend, and probably in love with her, and he has confided to her that he is dying of cancer. Somehow she knows that he will help her, that his own code as a lawman will be secondary to his desire to help her-- and I think because it is not HER code, she is fine with this. And he does-- he helps her escape. She apparently never thinks to call her husband or her son (although I think they've both shown they love her and would put her first-- this is her choice, to let them do their work).

However, Jax (the son) gets a panicked call from his girlfriend, and rather than go through with the ambush, he decides to go with her (choosing love over revenge, and showing what he values). But interestingly, he says to Clay, "I have to go to her," and waits for his permission. This is (for those of us who love this relationship) where he shows that he once again accepts Clay as his father, as the authority, after a season of hating him. Clay does not do as Clay would have done earlier, asserted that authority and ordered him to finish the job of the gang. Rather he shrugs yes, and even orders one of the others to "go with your brother", thereby depleting the hit squad by a third.

Then Jax discovers that his own baby son has been kidnapped by the Irishman (who thinks Gemma killed his son-- that's the murder the FBI lady is framing her for): "A son for a son". Jax calls Clay and says only, "I need you." Clay abandons the ambush and immediately goes to Jax, telling the others, "Irish took my grandson." He chooses love over revenge, but here it's love of son/grandson. Before, his revenge was a sign of his love for his wife, but here he shows that actual love-- being with a loved one in crisis-- is more truly --now-- what he knows to be love.

(Okay, details matter!! First, he has always identified Jax as his son and Abel as his grandson, but Jax has deliberately this season referred to him as "my stepfather/not my real father". See how precisely this is written-- today, Jax says, "I need you." That's all we hear, but that is a son talking to his father, isn't it? And as Clay is talking on the phone, he's holding the phone with his left hand. Hands are very important with Clay, because his hands are becoming crippled with arthritis. On that left hand is his wedding ring. Now the director could just as easily made that the right hand, but it's the left, and the ring is showcased-- the symbol of the wedding that brought him Gemma, but also brought him Jax as a son.)

In contrast is Zobelle, the evil one, and he is definitely sorry his beloved daughter is killed (by Gemma, but in self-defense). He really is. But when he amazingly escapes death by Clay (because Clay has gone to his son), Zobelle runs, getting on the plane that he chartered. Again, watch the precision of the staging here. The clerk asks him if his daughter is coming, and he says no-- that is, the writer has shown that Zobelle does not veer from his plans because of his daughter. This doesn't happen just in his head, or offstage, but right there in the action of the scene. I think it's important to SHOW the changes and the changing in the ending-- give the reader the ammunition. (Zobelle is played by Alan Arkin's son, btw, and has that sort of grave good humor that goes interestingly with villainy.) "We adjust and adapt," he tells the clerk, showing that he has not been changed by the events. That's his character theme, actually-- "We adjust and adapt," but for him, he adjusts but doesn't actually adapt-- a refusal to adapt his values and his agenda to the circumstances. Interestingly, in this he resembles Gemma, who loves fiercely, but cannot change her certainty that the code matters more than love does.

Jax and Clay, however, show how much they have changed. Both have chosen love over revenge, and love over their code of honor. In the end, they even choose love over what they think of as manhood (protecting what's theirs). Jax cannot save his son (let's hope there's another season), and collapses, and Clay grabs him and holds him up, and the end shows the two of them embracing and weeping. For such macho guys, this is a transformation.

But this ending-- and ending HERE-- shows that this is about parental/paternal love, not romantic love, or honor or manhood. This closes the circle of the season, which started out with Jax rejecting Clay as his father.

By "allowing" her men to continue with the revenge, Gemma is paridoxically liberated from the claustrophobically intense love that ties her to her husband and son and forces her into venerating a macho code that has injured her. She accepts rather the less complicated love of friendship instead. Her parental love has been exhibited throughout the season, but here she is breaking free of the tie that binds. (I'm sure she'll come back.) The conflict for her has always been what she has willingly given up for that love-- her love for Clay leads to her being raped, and her love for Jax has confined her to a continuing mother role (she's pretty much raising his son). She also, as Keeper of the Code and matriarch to the club, has always given up what matters to her for what's required by the code. She's never counted the cost, but now she knows that her freedom is more important than continuing in her Leather-Madonna role.

SO what does this show:

1. The ending is where you decide what the theme is, what the story is really about, what really matters-- and your final scenes should show that.

2. The ending should have characters act in a way that demonstrates how and if they've changed.

3. If some characters haven't changed, that shows something about them, doesn't it?

4. Write precisely here. Make the characters' dialogue and actions say what you want to demonstrate. At this stage, the ending, the characters are raw and true, all their defenses stripped away by the plot events. At this point, they will speak more truly than they have ever before, so let them speak.

5. Watch your staging and adapt it to your purpose. Show that something's important by "surrounding" it with conflict. For example, when Clay calls off the ambush, one of the brothers protests. That highlights that Clay is going against what's expected, and what seems sensible. Similarly, the clerk asking Zobelle about his daughter sets up the display of his inability to change, his central coldness. The scenes are set up and the events are structured so that these important points can be made.

Alicia

More on Gemma's dark moment

Why is this a "dark" moment? I think it's illustrative to see how this is set up.

Gemma is TOUGH. And she loves her men, and above all doesn't want to cause them harm. (And she knows they're dangerous when they're riled. :)

She doesn't "whine". She doesn't seek support. She doesn't ask for help. She is always in charge. That's her value system. Telling about this is against her own personal code. It's weak.

That's set up ahead of time. So when she is moved to tell this secret, to reveal her vulnerability and what she thinks of as her shame (she knows it's not her fault, but she thinks she was stupid and weak to let it happen), it's a very difficult choice because it goes against what she believes she "ought" to do. She ought to be able to handle this. And she sort of can (her sexuality is profoundly affected by the secrecy, and her relationship with Clay, so it's not unmixed-- and shouldn't be). Her decision to tell is made from love -- trying to reconcile Clay and Jax.

Clay, btw, has a similar journey. We of course think the husband of a rape survivor should act with love and compassion and never scorn her (and we're right). But by his code, or the club's code, which Gemma knows and actually supports, he should reject her now. That is, it's HIS value system, not ours, that makes this "dark", makes this a difficult choice for him. (He too acts with love, fortunately, but the writers quite rightly make this take a bit of time.)

But it's OUR value system (he should act with love) that determines, I think, that this is the right decision, even if it's the 'wrong' one by his own pre-existing value system.

Brilliantly done. But this is important-- we have to set this up. The action has to be painful, difficult, "dark" for this to be a dark moment. What in the run-up, in the whole story and character development BEFORE the dark moment makes this dark for your character?

BTW, there's a very nice setup moment for Jax in this episode. His friend, speaking of Clay, says, "He's your father." (Clay has, apparently, been his stepfather for 20 years, and they do love each other.) Jax says coldly, "My father died on Hwy 580." (His real father.) That is, Jax disavows this relationship (he has good reason, also set up). And so his action in the end of the episode, where he puts his hand on Clay's shoulder, and stays there as Clay covers his hand and holds it, is that much more intense, as it's re-establishing his filial bond.

Alicia

Sons of Anarchy dark moment

Anybody else watching this? It sounds crazy-- Hamlet in a motorcycle gang-- but it's really good.
The episode before the latest had a great crisis/dark moment. Gemma, the mother, my choice for the best woman anti-hero, saw her husband and son (his stepson) at odds, so much so that Jax, the son, has decided to leave the gang, and Clay (the husband) has voted him out. Very powerful, and well-acted. Okay, so Gemma sees this, and in her desperation to keep them both (she is afraid, btw, that Jax will kill Clay or vice versa, as they have been more and more in conflict during the season), she confesses something that she has kept secret for months, that the bad guys gang-raped her to send Clay "a message". She covered it up and never told her men or the gang because she feared their reaction, especially Clay's-- she thought that his ethos would mean that he had to reject her as she had been "violated".

Anyway, you can find this episode ("Balm") online, and it's On Demand for a lot of cable systems. Watch the ending. (Very nice Patti Griffin song accompanying, explicitly connecting Gemma to the Virgin Mary, for all you other parochial school dropouts.) Gemma, hard and tearless, explains in harsh detail what happened to her. The men are of course blasted. Jax comes to her and takes her hands and kisses them-- a sign of fealty and respect. As he leaves, he puts his hand on Clay's shoulder (understanding Clay's own dilemma here), and Clay covers that hand with his own. Very affecting. Finally Clay reaches over to embrace Gemma. Fade-out.

So her decision coming out of the dark moment is confession-- truth-telling. And it's painful and hard, as it should be. And it transfers the terrible pain to the men she loves most-- and forces Jax back into the group, and Clay to decide between his love and his code. (See how the dark moment decision can actually cause other characters to change too.)

Beautifully done. This is a very good show, and don't let the crazy premise get in your way. There are similarities to Hamlet, but in this, Clay and Jax do love each other in a way, and I hope that they'll end up reconciled and not dead!
Alicia

Foreshadowing with Recurrent Images

Last night on Mad Men, we saw a great example of foreshadowing by repeating images.* I want to briefly look at how they did it.

First, Lane (the miserly, uptight Brit currently running Sterling Cooper's offices) is given a stuffed snake in a basket. His bosses mean it to represent his promotion to head of an office in India. But because Lane knows he's being shunted aside, it's symbolic of power and failure all in one glance. This dangerous snake can't bite anymore.

Next, in the context of a private meeting to discuss business, Conrad Hilton shows Don a pair of cartoon ads featuring a mouse. When Don points out that nobody wants to think about a mouse in a hotel room, Conrad admits the mouse is his idea. We're meant to conclude that Don is better at this than the guy on the cover of next week's Time magazine, but the cartoon character mouse is also symbolic of something else, I think, something juvenile, something to do with immature -- as in not fully grown -- concepts.

Finally, Don attempts to explain his lack of greed by telling a story: Some snakes can go months without eating, and then when they finally catch a mouse, they are so starved that they can eat too quickly and suffocate to death on their meal.

That's it. That's his story. Snake eats mouse and dies.

We don't need next week's preview to let us know that the Hilton account will go badly because of Lane's poor stewardship, do we?

But here's the question I haven't been able to answer yet. When you have paired symbolic objects like this -- two snakes, two mice -- those pairings are not accidental. So. We also have two Genes. Grandpa Gene and baby Gene. This was a big issue in last night's episode. Young Sally is all freaked out because she thinks baby Gene is actually Grandpa Gene. Wakes up screaming, ditches her gift-from-Gene Barbie in the bushes, all sorts of troubled-child behavior.

And there's already a suggestion of immaturity with the mouse, and of death with the snake.

How do the two Genes fit in with the two snakes and two mice? Do they?

Theresa

*This isn't quite the same as motif (recurrent images or statements used to develop theme), leitmotif (pairing two unique items so that the presence of one always indicates the presence of the other -- think dun-dun music and the shark in Jaws) , ordinary symbolism (an object used to indicate an abstract idea), or "Chekhov's gun" type foreshadowing (which allows for no unnecessary objects, such as stuffed snakes in baskets). But those are posts for different days. :)

Anti-heroines

Remember our discussion of anti-heroes? I just discovered some anti-heroines!

Well, two.

Sarah Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (sadly cancelled).
Gemma in Sons of Anarchy.

Anyone familiar with these?

Notice a certain similarity--
Both are older (older than 35 anyway). Not nubile.
Both are outlaws (one on the run from The Terminator, the other the matriarch of a motorcycle gang)
Both are highly sexual, though Sarah tries to deny that part of herself
Both -- this is probably REALLY important-- are mothers of teen or young adult sons who are the sons of murdered fathers, and are themselves in constant danger
Both are physically tough and emotionally resilient

Gemma (I like her MUCH more, not sure why) is actually based on Gertrude in Hamlet, though she's more Lady Macbeth-with-a-cause. (Sons of Anarchy is a modern Hamlet, btw-- Hamlet is Jax, Claudius is Clay.) But Gemma is ten times tougher than silly Gertrude.

Anyway, I wonder if you're more likely to be an anti-heroine if you're Of a Certain Age... and the mother of a son you love fiercely.

Anyone watching SOA?

Alicia

In Which a Famous TV Writer Sees Things My Way

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this in my season-four Mad Men predictions:

I can't explain why, but I find Don's position the least interesting of all those set up for us last night. So, he arranged to have Betty's senile father move in with them. So, he prevented Betty's nasty brother from glomming onto Daddy's house and all its contents. So what?

This week, in only the fourth episode of the season, Betty's senile father fell down dead while buying peaches in the A&P. It's not too surprising, really. There wasn't enough meat on those story bones to sustain an entire season. Don is not engaged enough in his home environment for this to have made much difference to him. It was a flat conflict, and now it's done.

This was a mostly unremarkable episode (that is, entertaining and well-written, but without as many surprises or aha insights as we've come to expect). There were two powerful moments in terms of emotion and storytelling. First came when Betsy closed the door on little Sally Draper after learning of Grandpa Gene's death. Betsy is a lousy mother (except to that neighbor boy, Glenn, who alone of all the children can capture her attention). And poor little Sally Draper -- Don had better start setting aside a nice chunk of each paycheck for her future therapy needs. I don't know whether she'll end up in a drug-soaked commune or in a hospital on permanent suicide watch, but her parents clearly are grooming her for a tragic end.

The second powerful moment came when Sal danced the Anne Margaret commercial knockoff for his wife. Sal won't be able to keep that closet door locked much longer. He's losing the battle of Sal v. Sal by inches. He's one of the most interesting characters this season, a true tragic hero, and I can't wait to see what happens next with him.

We're being set up for more conflict between Don and Betsy over their mutual withdrawal from the home and family life, and Peggy is going to continue to surprise us as she emerges from her cocoon, and Joan's husband, if he continues on his current path, will not be long for this world. He'll disappear one day, and she'll serve a tasty "venison" stew buffet-style in that lovely chafing dish that was a wedding gift from the chief surgeon. Bye-bye, Dr. Rapist! Joanie, you simply must give us your recipe! (Okay, maybe not, but Joan is holding on to her job at Sterling Cooper for a reason. That's her safety net when her sham of a marriage fails.)

Theresa

For Alicia (and anyone else who wants to play along)

So, what do you think is the significance of all the singing in tonight's episode of Mad Men? We had three vocal performances -- Joan with the French accordion song, Roger in that disgusting blackface, and Paul with his college buddy. Do you think Pete and Trudy's charleston dance fits in with whatever theme they were trying to build with the music? It might have. Perhaps they were trying to make a point about the ways in which people perform. Not sure.

Also, Peggy + marijuana = win
Surely you like her better when she's stoned? I did. She had the two best lines of the whole night.
1 -- "I am Peggy Olson, and I would like to smoke some marijuana." (hilarious)
2 --
Smitty (in disbelief): Are you working?
Peggy (a little surprised): I think I am.


In the "I am always right" column, let's make a notation for Jane Sterling. Last week I suggested her look would change. Last season, pre-wedding, she wore absurdly tight clothing and unbuttoned her blouses enough to see inches of bra. This season, she's dressed in baggy sacks with jewel necklines, and "ladies who lunch" type hats. I thought her first dress, the black and white harlequin number, evoked the circus.

And what's up with Don suddenly becoming a truth teller? That bit at the end with Roger -- "they think you're foolish" -- was a bit shocking. But was it out of character? I can't decide. He doesn't seem to mind laying other people bare. It's himself he must hide ----- and yet, there he was behind the bar with a stranger, telling about his childhood. Is Don changing?

Theresa

Let's continue our deconstruction of Mad Men, a/k/a the best show on television. Where episode one provided an emotional bridge back to season two, episode two sets up the coming conflicts in season three. So let's take a look at how the plates are spinning and what might make them crash. IOW, today's lesson is in how to set up the premises for conflicts and how to foreshadow coming events.

Ken Cosgrove v. Pete Campbell

The battle between Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove is already shaping up to be epic. Last week, we might have all thought Ken was a shoo-in. This week, we get mixed messages. First, we see Ken dominate the Patio cola meeting, surrounded by creative staff and taking command in every way. Then we see Pete, joined only by Paul and his Commie Pinko Facial Hair, flub the Madison Square Garden account meeting. Score one for Ken, right?

Not so fast. The head honchos didn't want the Madison Square Garden account, as it turned out, so Pete didn't actually lose anything. And Ken -- boyish, charming, easygoing Ken -- ran roughshod over Peggy during the meeting. Yes, they do tend to treat her badly, but Ken takes on an almost cruel edge when he attacks her objections to their creative choices. I liked Ken a lot less after that scene. He was far too condescending.

Then we have the obvious pairing of Ken and Don. Don echoes Ken's cutting remarks when Peggy presents her objections to him. I think we can read this two ways. Either we can assume that Don and Ken go together, therefore Ken will win the job in the end. (I suspect this is what the writers want us to conclude.) Or we can realize that Don's ego is too big to tolerate a clone, meaning that Ken is being set up for some conflict with Don later in the season.

I am leaning toward the second choice, both for the reasons already mentioned and because I think Pete Campbell is too vicious and ambitious to tolerate Ken getting ahead of him. I predict Pete will crush Ken, but it's going to take him some time to figure out how to do it, and he may have a few stumbles along the way. Don's going to get in on the game at some point when Ken rubs him the wrong way. Ken probably doesn't have the stamina for this kind of war. Should be interesting.


Peggy Gets It On

Okay, let me start by saying that the Anne-Margaret screeching scene was horrible to sit through. And then we had to endure a piece of it a second time, later in the episode when Don watched it. I kept wondering why the director let it drag on so long the first time, and why they repeated our exposure to it later. It seemed like overkill. Really, we get it -- the ad execs for the diet cola want something stupid in their commercials. Peggy sees how stupid it is, but the men are dazzled by what they perceive as sexy. We get it. Move on, already. Please.

But I think there's a larger point. The Anne-Margaret song is not just a prototype for an ad campaign, but a glaring example of how cultural perceptions have shifted since the Mad Men era. This particular type of infantilized female is no longer glorified as it was then. And thank god for that.

I read an article this morning about how the Anne-Margaret bit was used to propel Peggy toward discovering and accepting her own sexuality. There's certainly some truth to that. But what I find interesting is that Peggy, the most modern female in the show, reacts to Anne-Margaret's stupid flutterings just as this modern woman did. Anne-Margaret trivialized herself in that song. Peggy and I both are made somewhat squeamishly offended while watching it.

My response to the Anne-Margaret thing was to grunt and roll my eyes a lot. Peggy's was to get laid. Go, Peggy. Her way is more fun! We saw her experiment with her own sexuality in this episode -- singing in her mirror a la Anne-Margaret, stealing Joan's flirtatious line about the subway, hiding her own success to make the boy in the bar feel stronger. But in the end, she took what she wanted and then walked away. She's still the most modern woman on this show, and her flirtations are play-acting used to achieve her goal.

I expect we'll see a lot more of this type of behavior from Peggy as the season progresses. At the end of the second season, she confessed her pregnancy to Pete. Without that hanging over her head, without guilt dogging her every step, she's free to find a new path. (Anyone else notice the lack of Colin Hanks this season? He acted as Peggy's guilty conscience in season two. She doesn't need him anymore.) Peggy's arc for this season, then, promises to be one of character development, but I'm willing to bet that the stronger she gets, the more she'll take on the guys over things like that Patio cola creative. I can't wait for her to start winning a few.


Roger Is a Naughty Boy

Dude thought he could dump his middle-aged wife and marry a teenager, and everyone would just fall right into line with it. How shocked he must be to discover that women hate this kind of behavior. We haven't seen Jane the Child-Bride yet this season, but how much do you want to bet that when we do, she's no longer the wide-eyed poet version of the Anne-Margaret sexy-infant-woman? I predict she'll be trying to remake herself into a grownup. I predict demure necklines, society lunches, and a character who begins more and more to resemble Roger's first wife. And the more she resembles the first Mrs. Sterling, the less Roger will want her.

The most telling line in the Roger subplot was when his wife and daughter confronted him in his office early one weekday morning. Roger went to pour himself a second cocktail, and his ex-wife scolded him. His reply? "You're not my wife anymore." Watch that line begin to resonate over the course of the season. Without the formidable first wife to check his less noble impulses and nag him into compliance, there's no way the ineffectual second wife can hold the reins. Roger will lose interest in Jane, and then his season-one shenanigans will look like child's play.

We'll see a lot of conflict between Roger's new wife and the other women on the show -- I wonder, in particular, whether last season's battle between Joan and Jane will get a rematch. Even without that, we'll have Jane versus the daughter (great foils for each other, by the way), Jane versus the first wife, Jane versus the wives of business associates. Oh, and can you imagine how awesome a cage match between Jane and Betty would be? This is going to be good.


Don Draper, Family Man (Yeah, Right)

I can't explain why, but I find Don's position the least interesting of all those set up for us last night. So, he arranged to have Betty's senile father move in with them. So, he prevented Betty's nasty brother from glomming onto Daddy's house and all its contents. So what?

There was that beautifully poetic moment when Don was watching the maypole dance, and he played his fingers against the grass. He was watching the barefoot dance teacher, and it was clear that if his wife hadn't been there, he would have been after that teacher like a dog goes after steak. But Betty was beside him, and his only recourse was to stroke the lawn and fantasize.

How should we interpret this? Is Don going to let Betty continue to act as a check on his behavior as he tries to be a family man? He didn't do such a great job of this last week when he fooled around with that stewardess. So maybe not. I don't know, what do you all think?

Theresa

Foiled Again!

If there's any tv show better written than Mad Men, I sure don't know about it. The writing is so controlled and so deliberate that every line resonates with nuance. The characters are beautifully drawn, too. In that Vanity Fair article Alicia linked, they described the writing as novel-like, and I think that might be why we're so drawn to it. Everything is built in layers, and the use of reversals and contrasts is almost poetically deft.

Alicia talked about how they structured the first episode of season three. Now I would like to revisit the foil technique we discussed last year when we looked at season one, episode one. They use this technique so effectively and so consistently that it's worth examining. Mad Men is truly a show not just for watching, but for studying.

Ken and Pete

Ken Cosgrove and Pete Campbell are account managers. When a British firm acquires the Sterling Cooper agency, the existing head of accounts is fired. Instead of replacing him immediately, the British financial officer splits accounts into two pieces. Ken gets one piece, and Pete gets the other.

Pete and Ken have dramatically different characters, and those character differences are highlighted in paired scenes in which each is privately told that he will be "head of accounts." Neither is told that this title will now be shared. Each thinks he has won the big prize.

So let's look at the two scenes. They're set up as foils with their intros. Pete is told that Price wants to see him, and responds, "I'm at lunch." It's a stalling tactic because he's nervous. By contrast, when Ken enters Price's office later, he breezily announces, "I heard you wanted to see me, so I had a sandwich for lunch." Lunch is not a way to delay an unpleasant meeting, but something to be concluded quickly to the meeting could commence. This intro flagged the scenes and made me pay close attention.

Pete is very tense when he enters Price's office. He thinks he is about to be fired. Instead, Price says, "I can't speak for everyone here, but I like you." This sounds to me like a pregnant line. (Pun intended, har dee har.) "Liking" Pete doesn't usually end well. Peggy liked Pete, and she ended up hiding a pregnancy and almost went insane when she had to give the baby away. Pete's wife teeters between spoiled self-indulgence and a childish yearning to return to her primary family, perhaps because she's barren, and perhaps because she's the kind of woman who would marry a guy like Pete. And remember Duck Phillips? He liked Pete, turned into an alcoholic, and lost his job.

So now here is Mr. Price, claiming to like Pete. Why would he even say that? He never echoes this sentiment when he's talking to Ken about the same promotion. It's a slightly strange thing to say, as if liking Pete is so unusual that it needs to be announced. With Ken, a guy everyone likes, no such reassurance would be necessary. I'm sure Ken assumes he's liked wherever he goes, and his friends hardly ever end up pregnant, barren, insane, drunk, or fired.

Back to Pete. When Price invites him to take a seat, Pete refuses. He insists on standing and betrays his deep anxiety over this meeting:

Price: Have a seat.
Pete: Why?
Price: Is something the matter?
Pete: You just fired the head of my department and now you're offering me a seat.
Price: How cruel of me.

By contrast, when Ken enters the same office for the same meeting, he takes a seat without being invited and lights up a smoky treat. He's casual and confident, interested but not worried. He is the anti-Pete.

When Price tells both men they're being promoted to head of accounts, their reactions are telling.

Pete: Is this really happening? I need to know it's certain.

Pete has been disappointed before, and it has made him suspicious and tense. Compare that to Ken's cheerful response.

Ken: Really? That's spectacular. Thank you!

Pete's anxiety never really leaves him when he's with other people, and it cloaks him in awkwardness through this entire scene. Only after he has left Price's office and is alone, behind his closed office door, can he give in to some celebratory feelings. He does a strange little happy dance -- one of the best moments of the entire episode, I thought -- and calls his wife to tell her the news.

During that call, he admits that he never even asked if he would get a raise. Ken, by contrast, launched right into the money talk after his cheerful thanks. Ken also shook Price's hand -- gratitude, celebration, and cementing the deal. But Pete, despite his good news, is still tense and edges out of Price's office almost without letting Price get out the word splendid. (Note that Pete immediately echoes this word, though, when talking to his secretary.)


Sal and Don

Sal (the closeted homosexual) and Don (the antihero protagonist) go to Baltimore together to schmooze the London Fog account. While en route, they strike up a conversation with a stewardess and, after a dinner and drinks scene, Don ends up taking one of the stewardesses back to his room. (He's such a whore, and he obviously hasn't learned his lesson after last season, but that's another issue.)

Sal goes back to his room. There is some intercutting between Sal's room and Don's room. They're played off each other a little bit. Sal flops on the bed, alone, then calls the front desk to get his air conditioner repaired. Don sits on the edge of his bed, not alone, and eggs the stewardess on as she strips for him. Their rooms are stacked on top of each other, separated by a floor or two.

Both men are the seducees, rather than the seducers. When the bellhop (a young man) kisses Sal, Sal nearly comes apart with yearning and terror. Don, by contrast, is very easy with his role as passion's victim. But then, he should be. He's had a lot of practice.

The stewardess peels off her jacket and blouse. The bellhop removes his jacket. Both Don and Sal give in. We know they're not holding anything back.

But then, a fire alarm sounds. Don reacts instantly, throwing clothes at the stewardess and leading her out the window to the fire escape. Sal is confused, though. It takes him a moment to recognize the sound, and then, his disappointment in the lost opportunity is so palpable that we almost wish he would ignore the alarm and take his one opportunity now, before it evaporates.

Yes, this is Sal's only such opportunity for hanky-panky to date. Contrast that with Don't line to the stewardess after she has confessed she's engaged and this might be her last chance to dally: "Believe me, there are plenty of chances."

As Don and the stewardess are darting down the fire escape, Don pauses at Sal's window and knocks to warn him about the fire. He sees the bellhop with his jacket off. Sal also sees the half-clothed stewardess, but this somehow is never an issue. (Why? It's obvious, right?)

In the street, as the firemen are putting out the blaze, the stewardess clings to Don, and the bellhop abandons Sal. Also note that Don's bare feet get a good flash on the screen. We know Sal is still wearing his shoes, though.


Are there any other details that support these pairings? Let's talk about them! If you haven't already seen this episode, by the way, it's available on demand if you're with Comcast. And I'm pretty sure AMC will repeat it on Sunday before they air episode 2. That was their pattern last year, if I remember right.

Theresa

Mad men and the structure created by a theme

Vanity Fair article about Mad Men.

What's helpful, I think, about Mad Men's writing is that the episodes are often unified by a theme. I think the theme or episode 3.1 might be "being someone other than yourself"-- Don, of course; but also Sal, the self-denying closeted gay man; and Hooker, the "assistant" who says he's certainly NOT a secretary and takes over an office (only to be slapped down by his boss). Don actually voices this, as a veiled bit of advice to Sal-- "Limit your exposure." You cannot be yourself in this world. (Connects of course with the whole ad agency thing.)

How does this help them select events? Well, everything is presented with that filter. The office manager Joan, who is Ms. Efficient in the office, meets Peggy in the elevator early one morning, and Peggy starts complaining about her secretary (Peggy used to be a secretary, and is trying to distance herself from that). Joan snaps, "I'm not at work yet." That is, I'm not that person yet, the one who has to care about your secretarial problems. (Now I'm thinking that Joan set up the male assistant by giving him the office, kind of leading him into getting above himself, so that the boss can put him back in his place. Efficient Joan, recognizing his superior status and rewarding it with an office-- so that he can be humiliated... see, she's using his self-delusion by pretending to be properly respectful of him.)

There's also the prop of Don's valise, which is broken. This lets him use a suitcase that has his brother-in-law's name on it, and the stewardess calls him by that name, and he goes along with it and gets her into bed under that false name. When he gets home, his daughter comes clean and confesses to breaking his valise in the hope he won't leave home to go on the trip. Restored now to her parents' love, she lies with them and asks about the night she was born, and they start to tell her about that night. (This is a close to the frame that started the episode, where Don remembers, or envisions, his prostitute mother giving birth to him in agony-- she dies during the delivery-- and anger.) Betty (the wife) smiles as she tells the little girl that Don brought her the stuffed Eeyore that was the baby's first toy.

So the episode is about imposters... but it ends with the child's honesty and her parents' true story of her birth. (Don only invents the "memory" of his birth-- he of course can't remember it, and it's presented as a play he's watching.)


"Limit your exposure" -- well, Don is forgetting his own advice. He's exposing himself, making promises ("I'll always come home") he shouldn't want to keep, finding meaning in life when he knows there isn't any.

Alicia

Need film/tv scene help

Help! For an article about romantic conflict, I want to use a scene I thought I remembered from a TV show or film. (Most of the details have fallen into a hole in my Swiss-cheese mind.)

Young woman. Young man. They're connected in some way, like they have to work together. They don't get along well.

So at some point, he indicates in some way-- you think I'd remember this-- that he's fallen in love with her, and it's a total surprise to her.

She says, and this is the only thing I remember precisely, "But you don't even like me!"

And he kind of turns away, embarrassed. And then something happens and it all works out.

Anyway, anyone recognize that? I know it's not much. And it occurs to me, because I can't think of how they looked, that this was in a book, but I'm pretty sure it was in a movie or TV show.

This is going to plague me and make me utterly useless until someone puts me out of my misery by telling me what I mean.
Alicia the Clueless

If you want to send a message, write a bumper sticker: The Decline of 24

I've been watching, off and on, the Fox show 24 since it started. This year's episodes made me think about why what was a must-see four years ago is excruciating now-- and why starting with a message so often destroys a story.

I'm not going to worry too much about the 24 producers' politics. Yeah, this is Rupert Murdoch's network, and he's a bit of a rightwinger, but I doubt he's actually intervening a lot personally in any show. (Then again, we don't see a whole lot of nice liberal warm-and-fuzzy shows on Fox... but nice liberal probably doesn't sell well... so little conflict, huh?) And anyway, the number one political aim of most rich CEO types is... making more money, so if 24's politics antagonized a lot of viewers, I suspect the show would stop with the torture right quick.

Anyway, the first couple seasons were pretty entertaining, very fast-paced and novel. The operating premise was that all the action took place in the 24 hours of one day. Every season had a new day and a new dilemma. But somewhere along the line, this became a show about torture. Torture torture torture. Poor Jack Bauer kept having to torture people to find out where the nuclear bomb was, to find out who was going to set off the virus that would kill us all, or to decipher whatever the dilemma du jour is. The first time he resorted to torture, it was subversively thrilling-- we weren't used to the good guy doing something bad. And we couldn't escape the intriguing echo of what was actually happening in the real world-- journalists and whistleblowers revealing the US (considered the good guy at least by, uh, the US) was engaging in acts that used to be considered torture. Okay, that was provocative, timely, even groundbreaking.

But then... I don't know if the writers were just attempting to recapture that jerk of a thrill we had with that first act of torture, or if they were driven mad by 9/11, or if they wanted to support the president, or .... I think maybe that what happened is they got addicted to the torture "conflict" (I air-quote that because the story then constantly undercuts the conflict) and couldn't give it up. I know the feeling-- I went through a time when I couldn't figure out any way to end a book that didn't involve kidnapping the protagonist. And it apparently didn't hurt all that much, because 24 is still on the air, still requiring torture and superhuman effort from poor Jack Bauer, still enthralling rightwing radio hosts who seem to think that Jack is not only real, but also a great role model.

But I'm not going to evaluate the marketability of torture, rather the dangers of deciding on a theme (in the sense of a moral message) and then building the story to "prove" that.

Since "torture" became Jack's dominant mode of action, 24 seems to be designed to show that torture is not only necessary but moral, and that torturers are actually heroes. I don't want to debate this (I'm agin torture, btw :), only to use it as an example of letting the message be the medium. The story should generate the message, should create the theme. Whenever you let the theme generate the story, your story is likely to end up preachy and monochromatic.

So using 24 as an example (and I have found it intensely boring the last couple seasons, so I will probably mess up some of the details), here is my suggestion:

If you want to send a message, write a bumper sticker. Write a blog post. Write a rant. Just don't write a story. If you want to write a story, write a story. Aim for an interesting plot, intriguing characters, a credible voice. If you have something to say, it should come out in the story... without your forcing it.

Here's the danger of starting with the message:

You lose the story.

1) Instead of developing a journey or plot, you start inventing events to push the theme. In the extreme -- like 24-- the whole story becomes an excuse for the theme. This season (and last, IIRC, and I probably don't, because it was sooooo boring) theoretically has some overall story arc, but mostly the terrorist attacks are used to set up opportunities for Jack to torture someone.

2) Ideally, the theme is "one-note"-- it doesn't develop throughout as a theme should, so that only when you've finished reading the whole story do you fully get the theme. Any story where the theme is presented straight out in a scene (rather than accumulating) is going to be unsubtle. And any story where that theme is demonstrated the same way several times is going to be repetitive.

3) Why does that happen? I think it's because you can't plan to develop a theme. That is, you can plan a plot, and you can plan a character-- you can outline those. But you can't outline a theme, not effectively anyway, because it should arise out of the story as a whole-- and out of you as a writer and you as a person and your worldview and your values-- and that can't be just generated. Also, the readers matter too, in effectively developing a theme (sometimes they actually come up with their own understanding of what the theme is), and you can't plan your readers. So rather than trusting the story to generate a theme, you might try to push the theme in various places-- causing repetition rather than accumulation. For example, let's say you decide you're going to write a story with the theme (I'm getting basic here :) that cocaine is bad. When you start with that as your aim, when you think about the purpose of your story as being to prove that, you are going to be wary of showing, oh, that cocaine is fun. You might start out with someone using cocaine and stumbling out into the street and getting hit by a car. (Cocaine is bad.) And the cop who comes to investigate the accident sees the little baggie of white powder fall out of the victim's pocket, and steals it and snorts it later and gets caught by his captain. (Cocaine is bad.) The captain pockets the rest of the stash and his daughter later finds it, snorts it, becomes addicted, and ends up a stripper. (You laugh, but isn't this pretty much how Reefer Madness works? And while that is a joke now, it was meant to show kids how bad reefer is... over and over.... You were never confused about the message there. The only question was-- why would anybody use this terrible drug? Oh, right, we can't ever show that drugs can be fun, because that wouldn't prove the theme in chapter 2.)

4) Events that are going to create a particular message are likely to repeat conflict, rather than developing it-- conflict starting in the beginning of the story (or TV season :), then rising in intensity and complication in the middle, and resolving in the end. Now probably terrorism as a major conflict would get repetitive anyway, especially when we cannot seriously (in this country) discuss it as anything but the embodiment of Satan, much less actually explore the motivations behind it. It becomes conflict without the purpose of change. So we end up with a conflict without any cause... just sort of free-floating evil. The motivation is: They're evil. So they do evil. And they'll always be evil and do evil because, well, they're evil. Yeah. Talk about one-dimensional villainy. But see, they have to be evil, because otherwise, we might have some qualms about Jack torturing them. In earlier seasons, a couple times Jack actually aimed his pain at innocents-- the child of an evil guy, the wife of another evil guy. But I think that might have been too morally complicated (though kind of interesting, especially when he shot the guy's wife in the knee and the guy STILL didn't give over). Better just to torture evil guys. No moral complexity then. No questions, no .... hmm. No conflict.
24 example: So far, most of the "terrorists" have been non-white, non-western-- Mexican drug runners, Muslims jihadists, African revolutionaries or whatever the heck they are this season. Now the "secret master villain" is often white, and seems to be played by Jon Voight every season (but I could be mistaken :), but the minions who do most of the dirty work are non-white. This is the show, lest we forget, that had not one but two African-American presidents before Obama, and I wonder if maybe someone got uncomfortable with the notion that we only torture non-whites/non-Christians (though I bet that's pretty close to reality). So there's usually a scene where Jack tortures some white guy-- usually one of his colleagues or a presidential aide-- just to show (well, I'm sure there's some intra-story reason :) that Jack isn't a racist. And that torture can be (even if it's not right this minute) equal-opportunity.

5) Just as the villains must needs become one-dimensional, so too the protagonist. Since the protagonist's role is sort of prescribed by the theme-- he's the "good guy", on the right side of the theme-- so his actions are required to proceed in the "right" way. So character action derives from the intended message, and the character only grows then in ways that reinforce the theme. 24 sometimes flirts with complexity, where Jack, the hero, actually tortures unsuccessfully. Once he tortured his girlfriend's charming ex-husband (so sue me... I'm a sucker for men named Paul with a British accent :), and it turned out he was wrong! Amazing! The ex was NOT the bad guy! Okay, that's interesting... Jack makes a mistake. Now this could deepen his characterization. First, we might see him realizing that torture can make anyone confess to anything... and wondering whether the other victims of his torture weren't guilty of what they confessed to. Second, we might have him wondering if he tortures because he, you know, sort of likes it, or maybe it has something to do with his need for vengeance, for 9/11 or with ex-husbands. Third, he might wonder if this whole torture thing was, you know, corrupting him, making him jaded and callous.
But no. The ex and the girlfriend both forgive him, and that's the end of that. If there's a dark night of the soul, if Jack rethinks his need to inflict pain on others, if he even wonders whether maybe he tortured Paul for some personal reason, and if so, if his judgment about who should be tortured is reliable... well, it doesn't have much effect on his actions, though he does seem to be getting progressively grumpier.

6) Shorn of the need to change that is brought on by a more organic story, the protagonist tends also to become a victim or a symbol or a martyr or a saint or whatever is best going to push the message-- a role, not a character. He becomes a flat character because he can't change much or the message might not get through (the ability to change is what makes a character "round" in Frye's terms). In fact, in 24, making Jack a victim (of torture, of kidnap, of imprisonment, of disgrace... and it's never his fault :) becomes subtextually rather interesting as it becomes clearer that he's supposed to represent the United States. Perhaps the US is like that, insisting that it is the victim when it is holding the instruments of torture, as poor depressed Jack is the victim of these evildoers who, for reasons unexplored, force him to hurt them.

In a story, it is usually actions and reactions that are the criteria for judging a character or the plot-- for plausibility, for morality, for power. But when the message dominates, action and reaction lose their centrality to whatever event serves the plot. If a "terrorist" does it, or "a traitor," it's perforce bad. But the same sort of action by the protagonist is regarded in a different light. The terrorist's torturing is unmitigated evil, and is needed to be regarded so to allow the protagonist to fulfill the demands of the message. So when Jack shoots an innocent woman in the kneecap, that's regrettable but moral. But when a revolutionary threatens to cut out the eye of the president's daughter (he doesn't actually do it), that is proof that he's evil. That is, the upshot is that it's not the action but the perpetrator that determines the moral content. This seems to me a dangerous ethical presumption, but it's really damaging to the story (though the "essentialist vs. existentialist" dilemma can be profitably explored in fiction, as the Buffy show demonstrates). The reader is actually discouraged from using her own judgment and value system-- what's good and bad is preordained when these characters were born (and woe to him who is not born in the United States!) If the protagonist's actions don't matter to how the reader is supposed to judge him, then the story is very likely going to be static-- everyone maintains the moral status held in the beginning. Essence cannot change unless action matters.

So... this is a lesson to us all. Don't write a lesson. Write a story. Write about situations and conflicts and people which interest you, doing things that change the plot and the world of the story. Trust that the theme, your message, whatever you think is important, will arise out of the story. Don't force it, or the whole story will be forced.
Alicia

Limitation is Strength

I have lately become obsessed with the Bravo show Top Chef, where chefs compete in all sorts of cooking challenges. (Hey, no calories if the food stays on TV!)

Anyway, there is really an interesting dynamic evolving this season. Several episodes, one or two chefs faces some disaster that would seem to doom the effort. For example, one time, Hosea's food was kept in a broken refrigerator and spoiled overnight. So he had to deal with that handicap as he cooked for the challenge the next day... he had to improvise, start over, work around. And he won the challenge, over all the chefs who had a much easier time and could cook exactly what they'd prepared.

Last night, the incomparable Fabio, he of the adorable Italian accent, broke his finger while starting to cook. This obviously is a great handicap when you have to chop and mix. But he somehow managed, and... won the challenge.

The corollary too-- whenever a contestant says, "Oh, piece of cake," because this is a seafood dish and she's a seafood chef, she always loses. It's as if strengths are dangerous because you get complacent!

I'm sure this connects to writing somehow. :)

More themes

Anonymous said...

How about: being true to your dream(s)?

Now this is sort of the opposite problem as the last one-- this is not too individualized; it's truncated. Being true to your dreams what? Do you mean a moral edict here? You should be true to your dreams? Or a recommendation: Being true to your dreams will bring you happiness? Or a warning: Pleasing others will mean you can't be true to your dreams? Or Being true to your dreams will make you selfish?

(Themes do not have to be sentences. There's a different type of theme that I call "the concept theme", where a concept like fate or evil is explored, as Oedipus the King explores the theme of fate. But for reasons I haven't deciphered yet, positive or happy ending stories seem usually to have sentence themes, perhaps because these stories are usually meant to be morally exemplary, so have an aphoristic approach.)

So let's assume that the theme is a positive one, that being true your dreams is good. So how to set up?
Let's look at a rather clever (if I do say so myself) way to present the process of theme in the three-act structure. It's based on Hegel's dialectic, which kind of applies to everything. ;)

Thesis: The statement. (NOT THE THEME. The theme derives from working through the story.)
Antithesis: The negation or flipside of the thesis.
Synthesis: What after going through those two in the story, the crisis/climax third act leads to.


Let's try a very common thematic progression, where a character has been hiding his past. Oh, you know, there's some of that in MAD MEN, so let's use that as an example.

Thesis: You can escape your past. (Don has discarded his past, has a new name, a new history, and it's a success-- he married a beauty queen, started a great career, lives in the suburbs. No one knows about his humble origins.)
Antithesis: You can't escape your past. (Don's younger brother finds him and contacts him. The brother wants his love, wants to be part of his family, but Don cannot allow it. The young man commits suicide, breaking Don's heart but-- it seems-- keeping the past secret. Then a young rival coworker -- who is interestingly like his brother in looks, but is rotten and venal-- finds out part of the secret and threatens to expose him. Don defies him, and manages to get away with it-- the boss doesn't mind... "All ad men lie, big deal." But now his secret is coming out.)
Synthesis: Only by accepting the past can you move on into the future. (Maybe that'll happen in the next season. :)

See how that breaks into the standard Aristotelian three-act structure:
Shortish setup
Long complication and reversal, rising action and conflict.
Explosion into crisis, then climax and conflict resolution.


Okay, so how does that apply to "Being true to your dreams is (something positive)"? I don't want to assume what it is in a statement form, but just thinking generally, this is just an example of how this might be structured:
Thesis: Adulthood is all about giving up your youthful dreams. (When I grew up, I put away childish things.)
Antithesis: Giving up your youthful dreams means giving up your self.
Synthesis: Maturity means finding and fulfilling a dream that works with your new adult self. (Groan... okay, so the synthesis should be like that only intelligent. :)

That is, in the process of the book, the theme might actually evolve. Like maybe we start off with a preliminary theme that we should stay true to our dreams. But as we write the story, we just can't make it work that our hero is going to end up abandoning his family and business career to fulfill his childhood dream of being a professional comedian. But we also can't condemn the poor guy to the life he thinks is trapping him. And so we come to some synthesis in the end that takes into account the totality of the story, maybe that he starts doing standup on the weekends at a local club, creating a new dream that is more consonant with his adult self and the responsibilities and joys of his life, yada yada. (I once knew a guy who in his thirties, decided that he was going to fulfill exactly that youthful dream. Interestingly, his first step in doing this was to dump his girlfriend-- a friend of mine-- to date another friend whose father was kind of prominent in Hollywood. Kind of an unheroic route to fulfilling his dream!)

Anyway, how would you set that up in the opening? Seems to me that you might not show his dream so much as his current life... but there's something that hints at the previous dream. Like maybe he's actually really funny. He's teaching math at the local high school, and his students think he's hilarious because he's always wisecracking. So maybe the first scene starts with him teaching an algebra class, and he can't help himself-- he makes some joke, and the kids fall apart laughing, and he looks through the little window in the door and the principal is passing by. And he's suddenly reminded of his responsibilities and snaps into stern-teacher-mode. (This might really respond to parallel structure-- the very last scene replicating the setting and situation -- hero in his classroom, but this time, he goes with his gift, knowing that the students will learn better if they're engaged, maybe. One of my favorite books, Up the Down Staircase, uses this structure. The new teacher in the first scene regards a student yelling, "Hey, teach!" at her a sign of disrespect. When in the end scene, a student yells that at her, she responds with a cheery, "Hey, pupe!")

So we see in the first scene his sense that he must be responsible and sober, and there is only a hint of that youthful dream of being a comedian, and-- I think this is important-- we see him specifically "putting away childish things" by assuming that stern mode.

I do think it's essential to SHOW things happening. It's not enough, I'd say, to have him teaching in a classroom. That doesn't present the thesis of putting away the youthful dream. (You do not have to get explicit, like it might be if he threw his copy of "How to Make It in Standup Comedy" into the trash.) While the readers might not immediately understand the importance of his telling a joke to his students, then seeing the principal, then assuming a stern mien, they will add that in to all that the story unfolds, and later see this especially in contrast with what happens in the second and third acts. The readers accumulate understanding of your story-- everything adds up (if you do it right). And the theme is the product of this process of accumulating meaning through the unfolding of the plot and the change in the characters.

Alicia

First Thoughts About Don and Sex

Several of you have commented behind the scenes that you don't think that Don Draper is an antihero. So I want to revisit this topic a little, maybe explore it a little more in depth, and share with you some of the analysis that led me to conclude he's an antihero. Not everyone will agree with this, of course, and that's okay. This kind of analysis is always subject to interpretation.

Spoiler Alert

Before we proceed I want to make it very clear that this post will be full of spoilers. If you don't want to know the plot twists, don't keep reading.

Protagonists and Their Spouses

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Don is an antihero can be found in his relationship with his wife. He cheats on her, and then when he's done cheating on her, he cheats some more. Speaking in generalities, how do different protagonist types handle the issue of marital fidelity? Do they cheat?

Romance Hero -- "I see only one woman, a woman so beautiful and infuriating that she claims every bit of my attention. I may have had sex with other women in the past, but any attempt to do so now, if I were even foolish enough to try it, will only result in my humiliation when I can't perform."

Tragic Hero -- "I want to be a good and faithful husband. Events conspired against me, and I cheated on my wife with my mother/sister/daughter/a nun. And now I will die."

Tragic Hero, Part 2 -- "I want to be a good and faithful husband. I made a mistake, and I cheated on my wife. Now my wife left me, I lost my job, someone dinged the left fender of my Buick, and my dog is dead. And it's all my fault."

Action Adventure Hero -- "I'm a lone wolf. I may have loved in the past, but it ended badly, and now I keep to myself. I might have a new lover in every book. But I'm not married, and probably never will be."

Women's Fiction Hero -- "I loved my wife. She died. Will you be my new wife? I know your first husband left you for a 22-year-old aerobics instructor, but I'm not like him. I'm a nice guy. I'll even wait for you while you have a rebound fling with that totally inappropriate guy."

Thriller Hero -- "Wife? Who's got time for a wife? I have to find the killer, stop the bad guy, avoid the cops, find a relic, escape from a collapsed tunnel, and learn how to fly a Cessna, all in the space of 24 hours. And I have no one to help me except this incredibly beautiful and incredibly intelligent young woman. Hey! Where did she come from? Maybe I should have sex with her."

Thriller Hero, Part 2 -- "Of course I'm married. Too bad for you. You may know things about me that I will keep secret from my wife until my dying day, but I am far too noble and magnificent to break my word."

Don Draper -- "Of course I'm married. It's all part of the master plan to make people think I'm normal. But I treat my wife like an accessory, I disappear for days at a time, and I sleep with anyone who catches my fancy. When I get caught cheating, I promise to be a better husband, but I am miserable and occasionally impotent. Obviously I'm better off sleeping around, even with a woman I despise."

As you see, a character's sexual behavior can be used to demonstrate something about the nature of that character. While we recognize that a character can still be heroic whether married or single, and while we recognize that heroic characters may go through different stages in their sexual lives, in general we expect married heroic characters to honor their marriage vows. And if they don't, we expect there to be consequences -- ranging from broken homes to broken fenders.

So let's take a look at Don Draper. Actually, before we do that, let's remind ourselves that the author of Mad Men is also the author of the Sopranos. Despite my perverse and abiding love of Mafia stories, I never watched the Sopranos, but my understanding is that people felt a lot of sympathy for the main character. He did bad things. He got away with them. We felt sorry for him.

A similar effect is being created with Don Draper and his marital infidelities. I think we can all agree that cheating on a spouse is a bad thing, just as murder and robbery are bad things. (Ignore for a moment the issue of motivation. We're talking about the act itself, not the reasons behind it.) So first Don Draper sleeps with Midge, and then he has that brutal affair with Rachel Menkin, and then in season two, despite apparent promises to his wife, and despite not even liking the woman, he has an affair with Bobbi Barrett.

Don Draper does a bad thing when he cheats on his wife. He gets away with it right up until the last moments of the last episode of season one. In season 2, Don starts out faithful. He's also miserable. He comes home every night, but he isn't happy to be there. His misery begins to manifest in high blood pressure and even on occasion impotence. So what are the consequences for his infidelity? Well, his wife is ticked off at them, but she doesn't throw him out. She just demands that he live up to his vows, which is not an unreasonable demand.

But the consequences of fidelity, the consequences of being a family man who comes home after work every night -- those are perilous. They cut right to the heart of his manhood and threaten his health.

If in usual circumstances a hero will not cheat on his wife, and if a hero who does cheat on his wife is exposed to negative consequences, then what we have here is a reversal of audience expectations. What other type of protagonist undercuts audience expectations? The antihero. Antiheroes fail to act when action is required. They wallow in angst. They do things that they shouldn't do, even though they know they shouldn't do them. They ignore consequences, they dodge consequences, or they accept consequences with a churlish shrug of the shoulders. Those of you who have been watching Mad Men can probably see how Don does exactly that, over and over.

Someone privately suggested to me that it was okay for Don Draper to cheat on his wife because the entire atmosphere at Sterling Cooper is so highly sexualized. We'll talk more about that next time.

Theresa

Introducing an Antihero: Big Good, Little Bad

Setting up an antihero can be very tricky business. It's not like setting up a villain or a hero, but more like a combination of both. As for a hero, you need to convince your audience that your protagonist is someone worth following. You need to give the reader a reason to care and a reason to want to protagonist to succeed, even if that protagonist is ultimately antiheroic in nature. So in that respect, at least, you introduce an antihero much the same way that you introduce a hero.

But there are some differences. There must be suggestions of bad behavior we can expect in the future, hints and innuendos and even outright badness -- foreshadowing, if you will. In other words, you have to provide a suggestion that there is badness in the character, but that suggestion must not be strong enough to overpower the character's initial likability.

Think, for example, of the Godfather. It's no accident that the story opens at Connie's wedding. What is the element of Don Corleone's character that allows us to cheer for him? In a nutshell, it's his love of his family. We can all relate to this kind of love, but for him, his love is so profound and deep that it means he can never deny a request made on his daughter's wedding day. His love for his daughter compels him to grant all wishes. It's his way, the Sicilian way, of paying tribute to her.

It's not the only endearing aspect of his character, and it's not the only reason we watch him. We are also captivated by his power, his cool temperament, his cunning, his boldness, his control. But these are not the reasons that we forgive him his crimes. We forgive him because he loves his family.

His love for his family is precisely what drives them to commit his crimes. This is classic antihero behavior. Often, the quality that makes us love them the most is also the quality that make them behave the worst.

Which leads us to Don Draper. There are a lot of things to like about Don Draper: his charm, his intelligence, his Superman-esque good looks, his apparent sexual stamina, his leadership qualities. But what is his greatest strength? What is the quality in his character that makes us love him the most?

It's his ambition. He has a powerful drive to succeed which leads him into some workaholic tendencies. Because he cares so much about his work, we care that much about it, too. His work is cool and hip and fun, but more than that, it's important. He's so committed to it that he doesn't go home for days on end while he is working. In fact, it appears that he forgets he even has a family for days on end, all because his work is so engrossing.

Just as we all love our families, we all want to succeed in the work place. We crave recognition, and so does Don. We fear failure, and so does Don. In him these qualities are exaggerated, just as with Don Corleone the love of family is exaggerated. And just as Don Corleone does bad things for love of his family, Don Draper does bad things for the sake of his ambition.

The first episode concentrates on Don's desire to succeed at the Lucky Strike campaign, with a brief segue into the start of the Mencken's department store campaign. Other things happen in this episode, such as Peggy's first day, and a bachelor party, but the bulk of the episode is spent introducing Don and showing him in action in his working world.

Speaking of Peggy, let's take a look at how she and Don interact. It's Peggy's first day on the job. She will be Don's secretary, and she will sit at the desk right outside his door. She is at her post when Don arrives. She stands up, smiles at him, and Joan, the head secretary, says, "Here's Mr. Draper now. With Mr. Sterling." Peggy says good morning. Don keeps walking into his office without saying a word.

Later that morning, when the female researcher comes to his office, Peggy buzzes her in with the intercom. Don says to show her in, and so Peggy does.

Then Don takes a nap, and Peggy is the one who wakes him up. It's only at this point that he notices her and asks, "Who are you?"

Now, we’re meant to believe that he is so focused on solving the problems in their upcoming presentation that he simply doesn't notice Peggy. His mind is elsewhere. But when you stop and think about it, it doesn't quite add up. I don't know about you, but if I had a new secretary sitting outside my door, I would notice. I wouldn't have to interact with her three times before I realized that she was someone different and new. There are days when I can be a total cotton head, but even in my fluffiest moments, I would notice if a body that I worked with every day had suddenly been replaced. Wouldn't you?

So Don is a bit cold, highly self-obsessed, and out of step with his environment. But this is not the first thing we notice about him. It's not the first message we’re meant to get about his character. The first message is that he is ambitious and driven to succeed, that he is a man on the rise, and for that he is worth watching.

Still not convinced? I bet that right about now you're thinking about how Don defends Peggy when Campbell sexually harasses her. I bet you're thinking, but he's nice to Peggy. Everyone else is horrible to Peggy, but he treats her like a professional.

After Peggy is no longer completely invisible to Don, after she has introduced herself and made an impression on him at last, Pete Campbell comes into the office. When Campbell asks, "Who is this?" Don introduces her as the new girl. He doesn't give her a name. But we know that her name has registered with him, because just a moment later, he calls her Peggy. It's not that he didn't know her name; it's that she's not worth introducing. He repeats this exact same behavior in a later episode when Campbell is in the office with his wife.

And what does Don do as Pete sexually harasses Peggy? Nothing. He doesn't say a word. Pete tells Peggy to start wearing shorter skirts, the beginning of an obvious and sexually charged appraisal of her body. Don doesn't interrupt. He doesn't send Peggy on her way. He just stands there and lets it all unfold.

Yes, it's true, he chastises Pete later for this. But does he tell Pete he shouldn't behave like that because it's demeaning to Peggy? No. He warns Pete that if he treats the office girls like that, he will never have any true power. He is not motivated by kind or protective feelings toward his subordinate employee, even though he knows Pete is a scoundrel. Instead, it all goes back to his ambition. He understands what it takes to get ahead, and he's telling Pete that sexually harassing secretaries will not help you reach that goal. One suspects that if Don could sleep his way to the top, he would do it cheerfully. His moral code is defined by his ambition.

We cheer for Don when he takes on Pete, and we probably don't stop to question it more closely. But during the Mencken's department store meeting, when Rachel Mencken refuses to be either charmed or bullied into doing things Don's way, he explodes. He says he refuses to let a woman talk to him like that. And then later, he begins his seduction of Rachel. This is not a man with an advanced understanding of sexual morality in the workplace. His earlier defense of Peggy has more to do with power and ambition than it does with his attitude toward women in the workplace.

Still not convinced? Later, when Don takes Rachel Mencken out for drinks to charm her and earn her forgiveness (worth noting -- he never actually apologizes to her), she says,

"I know what it's like to feel out of place, to feel disconnected. And there's something about you that tells me you know what that feels like, too."

She vocalizes an important truth about him. We see him acting like a superhero, struggling to get a winning Lucky Strike campaign, being touched by divine inspiration at the last minute, saving the day and probably the company. But Rachel sees something else. She sees what is merely hinted at until this moment. Don -- who doesn't see his own secretary, who doesn't see Sal's homosexuality, who doesn't seem to notice that his mistress isn't exactly happy about his late night booty call -- is not in touch with the world around him. If he were a tragic hero, this would be his fatal flaw. But he is an antihero, and it is evidence of his "anti" nature.

We could go on. We could, for example, analyze the very first scene, in which Don questions a waiter about cigarettes and nearly gets the waiter in trouble. In fact, now that you know the kind of small and subtle and even subtextual details we're looking for, go back and take a look at that first scene with the waiter. Listen very closely to what the people are saying. Are they mischaracterizing what's happening? Look for those tiny contradictions.

Don, like most antiheroes, is a complex character. By the end of season one, we understand that better. We learn about Don's dark secret, and we see the heartbreaking consequences for at least one person who has the power to disrupt Don's carefully crafted life. But in the beginning, in this first episode, the writer's job is to make us care enough about Don to stick with him even when he does despicable things. This is accomplished by showing us all the good things about Don in bright and obvious ways, and by only subtly suggesting the not-so-good things.

Theresa